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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25956949">acolyte and dog</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape'>batshape</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>First Kinslaying (Tolkien), Gen, Second Kinslaying | Sack of Doriath, appearances made by curufin aredhel luthien dior etc, mostly a character study, warnings for blood and violence and canon character death, when ur blest by a god and also a massive shithead: duality of elf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:27:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,144</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25956949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/batshape/pseuds/batshape</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He is not bloodthirsty in the selfish way. To hunt is to worship, and he thinks they know it as well as he.</i><br/>:<br/>Celegorm and his blessings, from beginning to end</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Celegorm | Turcafinwë &amp; Oromë</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>acolyte and dog</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When his milk teeth begin to come in, they are sharp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They are too sharp, and they hurt, and he spends much of his waking hours trying desperately to communicate that hurt. He cries, and he cries, and he takes to biting when his crying goes too long unpitied. His mother will talk, will sing, will wet a cool cloth and hold it tenderly to his cheeks, but she hesitates before she nurses, because those sharp teeth draw blood now, and he does not much mind the taste of blood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His brothers and their hands are marked frequently with small punctures, healed cuts made by his sharp milk teeth. Occasionally he gets deep into the meat of a palm, and his brothers hiss words that he does not know they are not yet old enough to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is proposed, with some careful measurement of jest—particularly in the rooms of his grandfather, who adores his newest bloodthirsty grandson—that he favors the taste to anything else he is offered. When he cries, his father rubs his thumb gently against his gums (it </span>
  <em>
    <span>helps</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it helps, it helps the hurt for a moment or two) and slices the pad of his finger open on a newly cut tooth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ceases to cry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He meets the Huntsman after he learns to run, soon after he is taught to climb trees. He swings upside down from the branches, and when he falls he hears his first crack of bone in his own forearm. And it </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurts, </span>
  </em>
  <span>in a way that makes the blood rush in his ears. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He cradles his arm to his chest, and the Huntsman bows over him and regards him ambivalently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks into his strangely bright eyes, pupils slitted like his own will soon become whenever hunger collects in his jaw, whenever the thrill of a hunt pares his thoughts down to the most animal of needs to </span>
  <em>
    <span>run chase snap catch</span>
  </em>
  <span>. And he forgets the hurt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Huntsman tilts his head, brings his gaze very close to his own, and snaps his long teeth beside the point of his ear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snaps his teeth back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is blessed, and he does not mind that they say it. Rather, he wishes they would say it more often.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is blessed, chosen by Oromë, and he knows that they know it. They see it in the canine lifting of his lip, the hungry inclination of his head, the ease with which he walks and runs and climbs to the highest limbs of trees and drops down soundlessly before them. They see it in the hound which pads at his heels, always, and in the way he does not speak often, but he smiles, because he is always on the cusp of a laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His grandfather still adores him. He brings him furs, bone, favors and totems of the Vala of the Hunt over which he had poured fresh water, fresh blood, fresh cream in worship the night before. His eyes reflect in shadow, not only the light of the Trees but the shine which comes from the animal grace of his lord, and his arrow and his spear always find their intended mark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is blessed. He is favored. He drinks blood and wine in the woods, loses narrowly to Tilion in footraces, and tells stories that rival the travel logs of his father at the tables of his grandfather. He is always hungry, and he is always fed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(He is occasionally a terrible thing to look upon, as those who are blessed by the Huntsman ought to be, and he wishes they would say this more often as well. He hears them whisper it, beyond his father’s house, and he loves to be whispered about.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he laughs, and he laughs, and he laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he leaves, the Huntsman’s blessing follows him. He knows this because his sword seeks throats on the shores and always finds them, because he is quick and hungry and terrible, because he thinks </span>
  <em>
    <span>run chase snap catch </span>
  </em>
  <span>while he slips metal from between ribs and laughs while he does it, because he cannot help it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snaps his teeth. He tastes blood. He laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is not bloodthirsty in the selfish way. To hunt is to worship, and he thinks they know it as well as he. Still, they avoid him after, and he thinks this is fine. He worships mostly in private now, and he never hears a response to his prayers after they leave Valinor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But his teeth, too, still always find their mark. He knows he is blessed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is a rather lonely thing to be, after a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He finds his cousin in the woods, and he is hunting her before he realizes it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has grown leaner, and her fingers which draw back her bowstring are tipped with blue-black dead tissue from the Ice. She is clever, and she does not speak his name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She aims an arrow at his throat, and he smiles. She hisses </span>
  <em>
    <span>motherfucker,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and he laughs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Írissë,” he greets her, and she looses that arrow at his throat. He drops, and it sings over his head. She has another marked for between his eyes, when he looks up. “Írissë.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am going to kill you,” she says levelly, and he tilts his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will you really?” His mouth curves, lips pull back from teeth. “Or do you mean only that you </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is a difference. He knows it, and he knows she knows it. He thinks she will not kill him, because he is not that much different from her brother, who also slaughtered on the shores, and if she kills him, there is a reckoning to be had for her beloved eldest sibling too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She spits, “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>left us</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” and he nods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yet you are alive,” he answers, and the words are cruel in their simplicity. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her face splits into a snarl. The point of the arrow shifts with the set of her shoulders, and she pierces him in the hand. He swears, exhales thinly, and she notches another for his heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not all of us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does not ask whom they have lost. He looks his cousin in her dark eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” he says, and he wishes he had not laughed before he had spoken her name. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Írissë. I have missed you.</span>
  </em>
  <span> “Not all of us either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She leaves him there, pinned to the earth, bleeding through his fingers. He feels the scrape of the arrowhead against bone, knows if he attempts to yank it out the way it came that he will likely destroy the sense of feeling in his hand, that he will knock loose and irredeemable the pieces of broken bone with it. He thinks of the Huntsman leaning over him, the first time they had met, of green snaking around his ankles and slithering up his face. He had been crouching on the ground then. He had been hurting. He had been laughing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His blood soaks into the rich black soil, and he imparts to that one Vala which he has not forsaken an orison of thanks. Írissë is alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As has become custom between them, there is no answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is blessed, and the Huntsman seems to have forgotten it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is blessed, and his prayers go unanswered. He is blessed, and no longer does he speak the name of that being whose hands had given him his blessings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He licks the blood from his hands now, rather than letting it pour into the earth and be construed as something like offering. Black blood, crimson blood, his own blood and otherwise, palms and fingers and wrists dripping with it, and still it turns sweet in his mouth. Huan heaves a sigh, watching him clean his hands in this way, and drops his head on his paws.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the Pass they receive messengers from the hidden city, riding hard and scraping on their knees before them, bearing letters which pronounce Írissë dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he wants to yank these messengers to their feet, to shove the letters into their hands and bid them to run. He wants to give them a head start, and then he wants to hunt them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His brother grips his wrist, as if he knows. He thinks </span>
  <em>
    <span>run chase snap catch</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and wants to lick even their own blood clean from his palms. He has learned that it tastes sweetest when it is his own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead he strides from the room, and Huan follows, and behind him his brother calls something which he thinks is an </span>
  <em>
    <span>admonishment</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and he laughs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs, and he laughs, and his voice breaks on the sound. Írissë is dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Huntsman receives no prayers, no thanks, and no blood from him for long after that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In Nargothrond, he hunts wolves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has heard that the Enemy’s lieutenant will wear the shape of a great wolf—heard from his eldest brother that the wolf which tore ragged his ear, raked those naked scars across his scalp many years before, was the lieutenant himself. He haunts the green woods, in the hopes that one of the terrible beasts he meets there will reveal itself to be the Maia in a different skin, so that he can write to his brother that he has at last returned the favor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(He has not tasted Ainur blood since Valinor, when he had been yet drunk on the thrill of a hunt and got his teeth into Tilion on a wager. He thinks he may remember it better than it is. He does not care.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His younger brother walks the halls of Nargothrond too long, too late into the nights. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he hunts wolves so that he will not do the same, will not run a hand against smooth stone walls and think </span>
  <em>
    <span>mine, mine, mine.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead he brings to the caves the corpses of many wolves, and heaps them bloody before his cousin, who acquires a surplus of fur-lined cloaks. He pursues the taste of blood soaked with Song. He fidgets, and he is always hungry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But shortly before his cousin leaves—</span>
  <em>
    <span>is chased out you have chased him out now hunt him hunt him hunt him</span>
  </em>
  <span>—he begins to walk the halls with his brother. He places a palm flat against the blue stone, and a fissure in the wall catches, slices deep into flesh. When he holds his dripping hand before him, studying the well of red, Curufinwë takes him by the wrist. Places his palm once again on the wall, and smears the color of their house against the stone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Curufinwë says, silently, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ours. Ours. Ours.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He is still blessed. But more so he is still hungry, and he needs no Vala for that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Huan chases them, hunts them, and he thinks that this, at last, is the rescinding of his blessings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he is angry, but perhaps he is not surprised. His horse shies, eyes rolling, and he snarls when he wants to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>please</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has never thought to beg before. He has never before needed to </span>
  <em>
    <span>ask </span>
  </em>
  <span>anything of Huan, who knows his thoughts at the moment that he himself knows them, and moves always with the same intent. The desire to plead makes him grow cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so he leans over Lúthien, thrown from his brother’s mount but on her feet now, and snaps his teeth. She looks at him with shining, terrible eyes, and snaps her teeth back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Greenery curls perceptibly about her, and he remembers again vines, tendrils, willowy branches climbing to his throat, parting his lips. (It is the first time the memory makes him shudder.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Huan leaps after them, jaws slavering, and he spits. But again, he wants to say </span>
  <em>
    <span>please,</span>
  </em>
  <span> like one would whisper a prayer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks, later, to ask Curufinwë if his eyes still shine, and bites down on this desire hard enough to taste iron—turned sweet, </span>
  <em>
    <span>still sweet</span>
  </em>
  <span>—in his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is blessed, he is sure. For he was born sharp-toothed, laughing, partial to the taste of iron, and he has never been anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He raises hounds in Himring, and they are of a different sort. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His brother remarks that they are crueler, and more eager to bite the hands of their handlers. The unspoken hangs between them—that these new hounds have no noble chief of their own, and are less inclined to follow a treacherous Noldo who is perhaps no longer even guided by the Lord of the Hunt—and it makes his lip curl.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But their teeth rip just as well, without Huan. And he leads them well enough, without Huan. They kill wolves, orcs, creeping things which venture onto the March, and his brother refrains again from commenting on their ill behavior. Once again, he heaps bloodied skins in the halls of his kin, and preens when they come to fine use in the cold. It is different from the worship of his youth, but not so foreign that he is not spectacularly good at it. His brother nods, very seriously, and he grins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The biggest of the hounds tries to take off his fingers. He conceals the offending hand in his new furred cloaks until it is healed and relatively scarless, but Maitimo is watchful. He reckons that he knows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(The blessed of Oromë are not bitten by their dogs.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He will lose them all in the Nirnaeth anyway—will watch them shake and shudder between the foaming jaws of great wolves, will watch them be cut down by pale orcs—and he will not raise hounds again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They hear, at last, that it is Lúthien's whelp that wears the Silmaril. The well of his jaw fills with the desire to take it from him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he stalks among his brothers and snarls, though he means to speak. His teeth are sharp, and his mouth is full of them, and they snap together when he says, </span>
  <em>
    <span>now, now, now is when we take it.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p><span>Curufinwë follows suit, and together he and his brother sneer—</span><em><span>hadn’t they sworn?</span></em> <em><span>Hadn’t they promised Thingol that they would kill him?</span></em></p><p>
  <span>It does not matter now that Thingol did not die by their hand, nor that Lúthien herself had worn the work of their father for years unassailed. (He feels something like fear in his throat, when he thinks of Lúthien, and he swallows it.) The peredhel heir of Doriath wears the Silmaril now. And with Melian’s retreat, Menegroth is unprotected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The eldest of them hesitates. But </span>
  <em>
    <span>he</span>
  </em>
  <span> is louder, perhaps fiercer for the first time in their lives, and his teeth are sharp. The twins are easily persuaded (the twins like him when he is terrible, they always have, and the maybe-loss of his blessing has not weakened their adoration in any way he can detect).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And hadn’t they sworn? Hadn’t they sworn?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hadn’t he pressed his bleeding palm to the walls of different caves, hadn’t he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanted</span>
  </em>
  <span>, hadn’t he whispered? </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ours. Ours. Ours.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>No longer does he dream of branches breaking his wrists, of vines uncurling down his throat. No longer does he wake cold, with the palpable absence of something filling his chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Oath, when it stirs awake again in his veins, feels almost like the song of a hunt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thingol’s heir looks like his mother. When he sees him, he smiles with blood on his teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When they cross swords, he snarls. His veins are singing, and it is a pulse he remembers. Dior Eluchíl cuts deep into his side, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>run chase snap catch run chase snap catch </span>
  </em>
  <span>flows out of him and makes slick the stone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he is bloodthirsty in the selfish way, now. Dior looks like his mother. He remembers how he had wanted for the taste of Ainur blood in Nargothrond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How does it feel?” he sneers, and Lúthien’s son slashes him across the face. Red drips into his mouth, and it is still the sweetest he has tasted (</span>
  <em>
    <span>he is blessed he is blessed he does not care if he is blessed</span>
  </em>
  <span>). “To know that you will die a thief, son of thieves?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The son of Lúthien bares his canines. The son of Lúthien may also be blessed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The son of Lúthien forces his blade beneath his ribs, and he gasps. His fingers spasm, and he drops his sword. They are close enough, with a sword buried halfway to its hilt in his side, that he can wrench Dior’s long knife from his hip without much thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Run chase snap catch run chase snap catch run chase snap</span>
  </em>
  <span>—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The son of Lúthien is brave, and blessed, and a little too bold. He fights barefoot, and wears little armor. His own knife slits up his belly, and catches at his sternum. Dior Eluchíl also gasps.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he laughs, and laughs, and laughs. He thinks to bring his shaking fingers, slippery with Ainur blood, to his lips, but he is too weary. He folds to his knees, and the son of Lúthien folds with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somewhere—in his head perhaps, in the aching tender space behind his eyes—there is screaming, and it is the voice of his favorite brother who begs, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tyelko, Tyelko, show me where you are—</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks it is a strange blessing, to be the first to die. He opens his mouth to snap his teeth beside the ear of Dior Eluchíl, and the vines slither in. There is sweetness in his mouth, in his throat, in his lungs, and he realizes that there are tears on his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He thinks, at last, that he understands. He does not know what it is that he understands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The greenery floods his veins, and the branches tighten at last around his heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the Huntsman folds hands against his face. The Huntsman is a terrible thing to behold, with his shining eyes and his velvet antlers and his shifting, changing, dripping teeth. The Huntsman presses their brows together, and he trembles, shakes to be touched. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You will guide me,” he whispers, for he is still young—too young to think that he is not in a position to be making demands of a Vala.  But the Huntsman’s mouth cracks and stretches into a wolfish grin.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Always</span>
  </em>
  <span>, vows Oromë, and the word reverberates down to his fingertips. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Always. You are blessed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs, though prolonged physical contact between them makes him weep—for the Valar are too great to be touched without consequence on his part, and the press of flesh to divine flesh makes his heart shudder in his chest—and he is surely also weeping now. He is weary. He is very alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He is blessed. He is blessed. He is blessed.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He will never be anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Blood and vine flow ever upward to his mouth, and he snaps his teeth.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can find me on tumblr as batshape!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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